


The Prisoner of Torchwood

by Rocky_Oberlin



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen, meantions of mental and emotional abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-25
Updated: 2013-06-25
Packaged: 2017-12-16 04:10:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/857615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rocky_Oberlin/pseuds/Rocky_Oberlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Master's take over of the Earth gives Ianto the time he needs to remember just where he came from.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Prisoner of Torchwood

**Author's Note:**

> This is set during the Doctor Who episode of "The Last of the Time Lords". Jack got an e-mail and this is my take on how it was forwarded to him. The rest is my own imagination of what Ianto's life was like so there are some elements of Torchwood season 2 and Children of the Earth, but no spoilers. The abuse is vague; I just had to have a reason why Ianto was so invested with Lisa.

I don't own Torchwood or the characters. I also don't own Doctor Who or those characters. I do own my imagination and this is a result of it.

 

Ianto tightened his lips and said nothing. He looked at Owen to see what the real second-in-command thought, but it seemed that even he and Tosh were in complete agreement. The drumming sound in his head urged him not to argue with Gwen, but the headache he was feeling when he ignored the drumming was screaming at him that he needed to stay. So it was decided. He was going to stay- One way or another.

"Very well." Ianto knew when to pick his battles. This was one where the show of compliance was going to get him further than the outright defiance he wanted to show. He would need to get in contact with his underground contacts again. They would be able to help him hide until the rest of them left on the fool's errand. "I'm going home to pack then. When are we to leave?"

"In the morning," said Gwen. She seemed relieved that he was going along with the plan.

Ianto wondered what would have happened if he had refused. A glance at Owen said that the medic would be repaying the bullet Ianto had given to him with interest. It would have been a fatal shot, if Ianto was reading the way Owen was fingering that gun. A look at Tosh said she was in agreement with Owen once again.

The Torchwood butler left his home away from home for his flat to pack for his long stay elsewhere. A phone call on another phone not hooked up to the ArchAngel network proved to be very helpful. He could hide while his team betrayed Jack once again by leaving their posts and the bully boys that would come looking for him could comb his flat looking for where he might be hiding. When he was sure that the others were gone, then he could sneak back into the Hub and continue to do what he had been sentenced to do when Torchwood first caught him.

He took his small bag of belongings and slipped out his back door into the garden in the back of his flat. He snuck to the blind spot in the city's CCTV. He had wondered if he would have had to use this particular get away and he was glad to have thought of it. It made him cringe though at the thought of hiding from his own coworkers, but they were siding with the increasingly annoying drums. Ianto climbed over the back wall and started to the meeting point of his contacts. Neither one thought that he would be using them again since his quick departure from Cardiff when he was a teen, but Ianto was grateful that they would still help him out. He had helped them plenty of times in the past.

The morning light showed Ianto's flat was being pulled apart by UNIT soldiers looking for a trace of where the Welsh man could have been. They questioned Gwen, Owen, Tosh, and even Rhys on any idea of the whereabouts of the missing agent. Nothing came up. No trace of him was found. Ianto Jones disappeared from the face of the Earth. But when the UNIT soldiers came to take over the Hub in the name of Harold Saxon, now known as the Master, they couldn't get in. The only thing that seemed to get access was a strange bird that they shot down in a pique of frustration. They never knew what hit them as they died in the Rhoald Dal Plass as the silver balls of terror tried to find out how they could get into the locked down base. Rumors said that the Master took his fury out on the captive Captain Jack Harkness when even the leader of Torchwood couldn't give him the codes to get into his base.

But for Ianto, the self-imposed isolation gave him time to think; time to think about the recent past and the distant past. It came to him in dreams and almost living memories that haunted him like he was sure Jack's past haunted him. An alarm sounded and Ianto forced his memories back to see what was going on. His lips twisted up in a sarcastic smile as he saw UNIT try to find one Martha Jones before she left the British shores. Too bad they were too late. She left last night on a boat that crossed the waters between Wales and Ireland. Another ship would be taking her from the far coast of Ireland to the shores of America. That was the only gift he could give a fellow fugitive.

Now he could only wait and watch as the world around him dissolves into terror and death. He would have to start stocking up and rationing his food. Who knows what the future would hold, but he knew his past very well.

Ianto loved his sister, but she only saw the good in their Tad.  
Ianto sometimes wondered if his Tad really had wanted him or if he kept him around because his mother was attached to him. The stories he told his coworkers about his Tad were really the happy memories his Uncle gave to him. His uncle was the tailor, not his Tad. His uncle took him to the movies on Saturday, not his drunken tad who worked in a department store and drank away half his check. But was his Tad who broke his leg and not by accident like Rhiannon thought. And his police record was not as complete as Jack thought it was when he went looking into his past. They never caught him except that one time. That was because his sister caught him putting away the food he had nicked and told a teacher. Then he was caught. His Tad was too happy to kick him out on the pretense that Ianto was leaving the family home after an argument Ianto and his Tad had over the theft. Too bad Rhiannon fell for the lie. The argument had been real, but the subject was their Tad's drinking and not the petty theft Ianto had perpetrated.

Ianto became the drifter that Jack accused him of when Ianto first came to him for a job. He worked the odd jobs, even working at a coffee shop just to keep a roof over his head while he picked pockets for sellable items in the pawn shops. If you went to the right ones, they never asked questions and rarely gave you up to the police. Too bad he picked the wrong pocket one afternoon and came up with something that brought him to Torchwood's attention.

He didn't know if the person he stole from was an agent or if they just had something Torchwood wanted. Someone else wanted it too from the way it came battering down his door in the middle of the night. Ianto had thrown every bit of scrap furniture he had at that thing and it just kept coming after him in that tiny flat. Then Torchwood came. They took care of the creature, but they also took care of him. Ianto Jones, drifter, disappeared in the night, never to be seen by his London contacts again. Or so Ianto thought.

He was brought before the head of Torchwood herself and she looked him over. A quiet inquiry to her staff got him dragged down to the sublevels and tossed into a small, dark cell. Ianto didn't know how long he stayed in there because the light turned on at irregular times and stayed on for God only knew how long. Time lost all meaning to him. He figured that was what they wanted as he reviewed that horrible memory. They were preparing him for something.

When they finally dragged him out of that little cell, he was brought into a brightly lit room filled with scientists and machines. Some of those machines didn't look like they were from the planet Earth with the way some of them looked so sleek as compared to the more familiar Earth made components. Other looked like they were for people with greater height or more appendages. They strapped him onto a table, pointed a satellite dish-like contraption at him, and backed away to the outer edges of the room. The computers seemed to take over as all of the sudden Ianto felt like he was burning, being torn limb from limb, being turned inside out, and just felt like he wanted to generally die. But he couldn't; he just lay strapped to that table and screamed until it felt like his throat was bleeding. Then it stopped.

Ianto couldn't tell up from down or left from right. They dragged his limp body back to the tiny dark cell and left him there. As Ianto laid there wondering if ripping at his hair and attempting to pluck out his eyes would help with the pain, changes were being made to his mind. Something he always had opened up even further, but it was wild. It tore at his mind and made him feel like he was raving mad, psychotic, or even suicidal. Any of them applied to his situation; all of them applied. Ianto just didn't have the strength to follow through with any of them.

Then one day relief came. After that, the door opened and an old man with a Scottish brogue came in with a wet washcloth. He wet Ianto's lips while he seemed to stitch Ianto's mind back together.

"Who are you?" Ianto rasped.

"A fellow detainee of Torchwood, but they sent me up to Glasgow to work in their base. For the time being, Mister Jones, you are my responsibility. Director Hartmann has told me to tell you about your new life."

Ianto learned. While he was given more privileges in Torchwood 2, he was still the prisoner of Torchwood London. Ian helped him put what was left of his life back together and helped him go to University. Ianto learned about archiving and handling the junk London sent up to them. Ian kept him stable while he learned to balance his new abilities of the mind. Ianto, it seemed, absorbed everything; he knew everything he learned. There were more talents, but they weren't as prominent and Ian taught him how to hide it from London. Then the accident happened that took Ianto's anchor away and brought him back to the attention of Torchwood London. Ian was killed when a piece of "junk" sent to them to be filed away at Torchwood House activated and fired. Archie was sent to take over the derelict base and Ianto was brought back down when Director Hartmann realized that he was still alive.

The loss of Ian was hard on Ianto. Ian was the anchor that kept Ianto from drifting into his mind and not returning to the here and now. The scientists who had first tried their little experiment on him were brought back together and they studied him. They studied how he was able to absorb the knowledge from alien books, from computer files, and, scarily enough, from their own minds. Ianto couldn't help it; he was just drifting. Then the new intern came. The scientist noticed how Ianto seemed to become more alert around the girl, Lisa Hallet. They studied how he reacted to information gathering when she was there and when she was gone for the day. They were getting excited about how he could become a walking information center that they could use to record and verbally give back any and all information that they fed him when he was anchored to Lisa. She became his new anchor. Lisa Hallet was not best pleased with the prospect.

While it looked like she was the doting anchor to keep their new toy going, in actuality she was making him dependent on her. She fed him on how if he didn't do as she told him outside of the experiments, she would walk away and he would be left floating in his mind. She was to be his end all, be all. She backed up those threats with enforced loss of her anchoring presence. It got to the point that Ianto was scared to anger her in anyway because she would leave him floating in his mind with the information that the scientists were shoving in hand over fist. He became her toy.

Then the Void Ball arrived and the Tower was scheduled to be extended higher to reach the rift hanging over London. Ianto was ignored in favor of the new projects. The scientists sent him off to the Archive department and his past was changed from the fact to the fiction that everyone reads today. The one shoplifting offence and the drifting were kept, but the drifting was moved up to after he attended University and before he was "hired" by Torchwood. Few knew his real background and they all died on the day Canary Wharf became the battle ground between the Cybermen and the Daleks.

Ianto saved Lisa for one thing. She was his only way of staying out of places like Providence Park. The last threat by Director Hartman before he was sent off to Glasgow also kept him close to any Torchwood he could get into out of fear of being lost in the prison system. "We own you, Jones. If you try to leave Torchwood, we will have you thrown into prison and forgotten. No trial, no lawyer, no way out. You belong to us." Those two factors led him to Cardiff and Torchwood 3. He just had to convince the new and enigmatic director of Torchwood to hire him.

Ianto didn't know when it happened or how, but he figured while Lisa was losing the fight against the Cyber programing, Ianto was slowly finding a new anchor. They say that hindsight is 20/20 and it did give Ianto insight to that painful experience of when Lisa Hallet was discovered by the rest of the Cardiff team. He figured that Lisa had him so wound up by her threats that he actually started to believe the lies she told about how they were in a relationship- The lie that he did love her; the lie that he was willing to marry her. It seemed so complete that he was willing to sacrifice the world to try to save her and ended up killing Dr. Tanzinaki and innocent Annie; although in hind sight, the "good" doctor was about as innocent as Director Hartmann or the scientists who did this to him.

That month long suspension gave him time to clear out his head while he drifted through his mind. He was finally able to process what was in his mind and bring it to order. The first thing he did was to take a step back and look at what Lisa had told him. Some of his feelings were real; he had felt affection for her as his anchor and what he thought was a friend until she started the mental abuse. It was for those feelings that he mourned the loss of Lisa Hallet. Then there was the fact that while he was losing his second anchor, he hadn't started drifting as she slowly lost her fight. He had bound himself to another anchor. It was clear who it was when Captain Harkness came to see why Ianto wasn't answering any of the checkup phone calls. Ianto found his new anchor. Too bad he wasn't able to tell him.

And then there was the pounding of drums in the background. It was faint at first and Ianto noted that it started when the first ArchAngel satellite went up into space. But it was slowly getting louder and causing him raging headaches. He was suffering from one when he felt the brush of a foreign mind against his when Tosh had that alien pendant. At the time it felt like his whole world was grey from the headache the drums were causing. When he followed the instructions of the drums, the headache went away and for a while the instructions were fine. It didn't seem to cause him any trouble. Then it told him to agree with the others in opening the rift. To go against Jack's orders and he obeyed. The headache was gone for a while, but the guilt and fear were worse.

Never again would Ianto go against Jack's orders.

It was strange that while Jack lay in the morgue with Gwen-bloody-Cooper sitting in wake after she had opened the Rift to save her boyfriend that she was ignoring, Ianto wasn't lost in the depths of his mind. Ianto suspected that something happened; may be the Rift opening changed his dynamic once again or maybe it was the Network that broadcasted the drums. Either way, Ianto was able to function without Jack being there to keep him from drifting.

But Ianto was able to feel the difference when Jack finally woke up from the long death sleep. Everything felt sharper and clearer. The drums faded to nothing and the headache didn't almost blind him in pain. Ianto had wondered when Jack was going to make the call to have Ianto taken to prison. It never came, then the kiss that Jack gave Ianto warmed him to his toes and inflamed his mind with something more than the games they had been playing after the second death of Suzie. Ianto felt free for once in his life.

Then Jack left. He was gone.

Ianto felt the shackles return as the drums sounded louder in his head. Then the election of Harold Saxon as the new Prime Minister of Great Britain and the phone call with the orders to go to Nepal and the Himalayas. The drums sounded louder and louder as Ianto pushed against the desire to comply. In the instance of his freedom, Ianto understood what the drums were doing. And it frightened him.

He hid with the homeless; he shed the clothes of the prisoner of Torchwood London and became the drifter he was once before. Then when the UNIT soldiers were tearing his home apart, he snuck into the Hub and locked it down for all except Myfanwy. When they shot his reptilian friend, he shot them from the invisible lift as retribution at 8:03 on the day after the world ended. Then he locked it down and used the lower tunnels to get out scavenging for food. That was before things went really wrong with the world.

Now he lays here starving and waiting for his murderer to come through the cog door. But Ianto has a surprise. The information that the Master wants is no longer accessible. He didn't just sit in the dim light and contemplate his existence and what led him here. He erased everything and trashed the whole system. The Master could use as many people like Tosh as he could to rebuild the whole system, but the information was completely gone. He had wiped everything and was waiting to die. Even if he lived, Ianto planned to drift within his mind while he archived everything he had learned. If the Master tried to use Jack to pull him out, then Ianto will just find another way to die.

Ianto looked up as the cog door rolled open to reveal the Lord and Master of Destruction. He stood from his seat on the floor and waited for the opening salvo.

The Master just looked at him. "Kill him."

The Toclafane giggled as they sliced him to pieces and he screamed. He was glad to have sent on that e-mail to Jack from that reporter. He was glad to have saved the Universe from the mad Time Lord by erasing everything Torchwood had learned about the different races. He was glad to die before he could be used against Jack.

Death was darkness, but the light in the distance gave him hope. Why didn't Jack see that light? Why hadn't Suzie? Or any of the others Jack had questioned?

Ianto didn't care at the moment. He just wanted to keep going forward to that bright spot in the distance.

Then he was pulled back. 

Ianto lays on the couch as the news exclaim over the death of the President of America. The cog door wheels back to reveal an angry team from Torchwood. Apparently they didn't like Nepal. Or they were angry at him. Right now Ianto doesn't care. Neither Gwen nor Owen has the power to suspend him. They may be fighting over who is in charge, but only Jack can decide his fate because he is the Director of Torchwood. 

So far, the Jack in the cryogenic unit hasn't said a word.


End file.
